"I'm trying to put myself out of work"

OK, so I might not have been real specific on certain details, so I want to clear up the muddy waters.

I grew up in Pennsylvania. In 2005 I was enrolled as a cadet at West Point. For various reasons, I quit after two years in order to, as the Blues Brothers would put it, go on a mission from God. I found out about this place called Andre House in Phoenix, and that's where I ended up. So during the days, I work at our hospitality center which provides showers, clothing, laundry, phones, and dinner to whoever, mainly homeless people in the area.

What I was originally going to write about today was the reflection I gave this morning at Mass (we have Catholic Mass Monday-Thursday in the parking lot of our building). Part of why I wanted to come here was to have a religious experience and become more comfortable in my faith. This morning I got the chance to come a little closer to that goal. Basically, the core staff takes turns reflecting on the readings from the Bible on each day (kind of like a sermon). Today was my first crack at this. I had the religious brother on staff, Richard, tutor me a little bit on the readings last Friday since this is the wild blue unknown for me. I'm going to have to work on my delivery, but I think I kind of got the point across. The biggest thing I tried to say was that we need to recognize and befriend the "aliens" that we encounter in life. This is something that Moses talked about to the Israelites, and something Jesus talked about as well.

I was also in charge of organizing our noon time prayer session for the staff. I often get asked various questions by the people that receive our services. A popular one is, "why are you here?” I think it's a little late for me to be thinking about that one, but here's another one that got to me, "what do you want to get out of this experience?" I had to think about that one, and so I had the staff think about it as well today at prayer. One of the guys who comes and volunteers with us regularly was there, Carlos. He is also a counselor for a lot of people in the area. What he said to answer my question was very unique. He said, "every day I'm trying to put myself out of work." Every day here, we're trying to solve the problems of this little corner of the world. I think it might be naive to think that we can actually exterminate hunger, poverty, homelessness, and addiction, but we sure are trying. We are called to befriend these “aliens” and give them whatever we can to help them move on and build a better life.

Can you say that in your line of work? Are you trying to put yourself out of business?